The Boston Celtics are back at the top of the mountain and president of basketball operations Brad Stevens has received a lot of credit for that. Stevens has built up quite a team via some smart trades but his most significant contribution might have been the trades he didn’t make, to ensure that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown remained together on the Celtics.
“He was the coach who signed off on drafting each of them, then the executive entrusted with building the right team around them,” Ramona Shelburne wrote for ESPN. “He was the decision-maker on all of the trade offers that came in from around the league as teams hoped Boston would lose patience with one or both of them.
“He was the man, sources said, who said no or decided not to pursue trades for Paul George (2017), Jimmy Butler (2018-19), Kawhi Leonard (2019), Anthony Davis (2019), and Kevin Durant (2022),” Shelburne added.
With the Celtics coming up short time and time again in the Tatum-Brown era, many on the outside wanted the team to part with one of the two. It was felt they needed to make a splash and get a superstar, but Stevens appears to have always believed that no such move was required.
It would have been easy to lose faith in the 2022 offseason, though, when Kevin Durant requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets. In the five seasons leading up to that, the Celtics had been knocked out in the Eastern Conference Finals twice (2018, 2020) and had lost once in the NBA Finals (2022).
A fair few executives would have looked at Durant as the piece to help them finally get over the line and given the green light to part with Brown to get the deal done. As per this report, Stevens resisted the urge and Durant ended up on the Phoenix Suns in 2023.
The Celtics, meanwhile, signed Brown to a five-year, $304 million supermax extension the same year. It was seen as a massive overpay, but he repaid their faith by winning Eastern Conference Finals MVP and Finals MVP in 2024.
Would the Celtics have won more by now had they traded for George, Butler, Leonard, Davis, or Durant? It’s hard to say for sure, but with them winning this 2024 championship, they would have no regrets over not doing so.
Brad Stevens Felt The Criticism Of Jayson Tatum And Jaylen Brown Was Stupid
Stevens is a soft-spoken and reserved character but he had some things to get off his chest after the Celtics emerged victorious. During the celebrations, Stevens passionately defended Tatum and Brown.
“The criticism is stupid. I don’t care. Those two have achieved more than most 25, 26-year-olds ever had. The scrutiny was because they were playing in late May and June… I’d rather be in the mix and have my guts ripped out than suck. And those two have been really good for a long time.”
The fact that Tatum and Brown had success right away meant they were indeed held to a different standard than most other relatively young players/duos. The season was seen as a failure whenever they were knocked out in the playoffs over the last three or four years, even though neither was close to being in their prime.
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